Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Cross”

29 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Cross”

By Neville Goddard May 17, 1963

___(??) very practical and yet you’ll find it very spiritual, which to me is the most practical. When you see a cross, do you think of suffering? And you hear someone say he was crucified, do you think, as the world undoubtedly thinks, that it is a suffering state? And if I told you that the cross is a spiritual wedding ring, would you believe it? When you see someone wearing a wedding ring, you know that there’s a union, there’s a marriage, and there should be love in that state, there should be. But may I tell you, when you see the cross hereafter think of a spiritual wedding ring, for it really is. For the cross is the symbol of God becoming man that man may become God, and that’s the cross. The central teaching of the Bible is the cross. He actually becomes us, nails himself upon us. For we were dead, and he was alive, and he so loved the creature that he became his own creation to convert it, to transform it—like a Pygmalion and a Galatea—into himself.

Now, we are told in Genesis, a little man is given seemingly to another, but all the commands in the Bible are to God by God. For man was not alive. And he commands man to leave everything and cleave to his wife, and then they become one flesh. So when we read the Bible and saw the bodies male/female, you might think when you read of a woman that it means a female, no, it doesn’t; when you read of a man it means a male, no it doesn’t. Whether it be male or female, it is speaking of us. And woman, we are told in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, “And woman will be saved by the bearing of children.” If you take that phrase “the bearing of children” and go to the bottom of the page—it should be in your Bible, it is in my Bible, in all my Bibles, I have many—there’s a little note at the bottom of the page which tells us that that phrase “bearing of children” literally means “by the birth of the child.” Definitive, the child. So woman is saved by the birth of the child (2:15).

Well, I am that woman. I am a man, a male. I have sired two children. My children live in this world. I’m married. But I am the woman spoken of in that passage, the last verse of the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. I am the woman; God is the husband. Listen to these words carefully, Sing, O barren—it begins Isaiah 54—Sing out, you barren one… for you will be more fertile than those who are married (verse 1). In the same chapter, Isaiah 54:5, the statement is made, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” My Maker is my husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. Now I am told he has to become me and cleave to me, for I am his wife. He had to leave everything and forget everything and so cleave to me we become one flesh.

Now, Paul tells us, in the very end when he completes the job, Paul makes the statement, “Henceforth, let no one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). Not little holes through here or a crown of thorns on my head or a gash in my side or holes in my feet, but everything said of him you experience seemingly in your body. You go through all the experiences, and it takes place in your body. His birth, his fatherhood, everything in the world takes place in you. So you bear on your body the marks of Jesus.